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VACIAITIING 








Seneca Defending Canada’s Cup. 
THE first of the Canada’s cup races was a 
ghastly surprise to Canadians. 
They went down to Charlotte, N. Y., on Lake 
Ontario, not cock sure of winning by any means, 
but confident that they had a boat in Adele that 
would make every finish at least exciting, and 
that in the windward work would make even 
Herreshoff the Great sit up and take notice. It 
all of which they were bitterly disappointed. It 
looked very much for a long while as if this 
first race would never take place. There were 
wigs on the green over the measurement ques- 
tion. The rules give the challengers the right 
to stipulate the class, and the Royal Canadian 
Y. C., of Toronto, in offering their third chal- 
lenge for the trophy stipulate the 27ft. class or 
class P. The Rochester Y. C. agreed, and as 
the universal rule, the terror of amateur or 
slightly skilled measurers, was coming into force, 
It was further agreed that: ‘Each club shall 
submit to some person mutually agreed upon a 
plan of its representative yacht, on which shall 
be lines from which calculation of her displace- 
ment can be made and a measurement of her 
‘L! This design must be certified as being 
correct by her designer, and the referee’s re- 
port made from this design shall be final. W. 
P. Stephens, of Bayonne, N. J., is the man 
selected by mutual agreement as the referee. 
The Royal Canadian Y. C. made sure their 
boat was nicely within the limit. and then asked 
the Rochester people how they stood. Rochester 
thought they were all right; at least, Herreshoff, 
the designer of their defender Seneca had said 
What about her plans? Well, they never 
had had any, but they would get them. But they 
reckoned without their designer. The Wizard of 
SO. 
Bristol had never given up plans before, and 
he was not going to give them up now. Cana- 
dians insisted. What was to be done? Herres- 
hoff sent a couple of ‘dimensions by telegraph 
and faded away into some unapproachable spot. 
It was said that Seneca was never lined out, 
but was built from a model, and the model was 
locked up, and Herreshoff had the key. It was 
a deadlock. The real trouble was that Seneca 
was slightly over measurement. There were 
some heated reminiscences exchanged between 
club representatives about how the Canadian 
challenger Invader was over measurement at 
Chicago in 1901, and how the American defen- 
der Iroquois was measured with her mainsail 
wet and shrunk in 1905. The huge roach to the 
after leach of Seneca’s mainsail was pointed to 
as an example of how Herreshoff had tried to 
grab sail area, and the odd strut, like a little 
bowsprit at the mast head, that throws her fore- 
stay out of alignment, was given as .another in- 
stance. There was unofficial talk of Seneca being 
withdrawn through being unable to qualify as 
to measurements, of the Canada’s cup being 
handed over to the challengers, and by them in 
turn to its donors, the original Canada syndi- 
cate, and of a match for anything from a flag 
to $4,000 being sailed between Adele and Seneca, 
all of which was air, picturesque, but hot. 
Finally they compromised by having Seneca 
weighed, so as to get her displacement. They 
could have done this in the first place without 
any jangling, and it was clearly a concession 
on the part of the Canadians, for they were 
waiving their undoubted right to the submission 
of the plans to Mr. Stephens. 
Seneca was hauled out and weighed the morn- 
ing of the race. Her gross weight was found 
to be 17,000 pounds. It is odd how they came 
to the round figures, but after deducting the 
tackling and carriage they found she weighed 
16,446 pounds. This was a_ little better—53 
pounds—than Herreshoff had said, but. it still 
did not provide a large enough displacement 
divisor to bring her in the class. It was found 


necessary to reduce the area of the sails, or 
rather its measurement, by ten square feet. This 
was accomplished by shifting up the spreaders 
and raising the mainsail. This brought up the 
base of the perpendicular some inches and 
shortened the whole. 
These alterations took all morning. They 
began in Charlotte Harbor, and were completed 
out in the lake, the judges allowing a postpone- 
ment of the start until 1 P. M., within thirty 
minutes of the limit set for starting. 
There was a splendid fleet of sail, gasolene 
and steam yachts, some fifty in all, there to see 
the battle. The U. S. revenue cutter Dallas kept 
the course clear, and the judges sailed around 
in the steam yacht Navajo. The wind was light 
and northeasterly, six miles an hour at the start, 
increasing to eight, and then dying away to a 
zephyr. The yachts were given a triangular 
course with all buoys to be left to starboard. 
The start was at 1 o’clock. The race itself 
was spectacular only at the last, when it sim- 
mered down to a contest between Seneca and 
the clock. 
To most people the start seemed an even break. 
At one end of the line Adele, however, got over 
first, and Canadians cheered skipper Jarvis and 
plucked up courage, saying he had atoned for the 
three starts Hanan got, one after another, when 
these two skippers last met in the cup contest 
of 1903 at Toronto. From the judges’ boat the 
time of the start was made, Adele 1.00.25, 
Seneca 1.00.31, the Canadian leading by six sec- 
onds. They went over on the port tack, Seneca 
to leeward, crossing about the middle of the 
line. Thirty seconds after gun fire Seneca came 
about and Adele followed. The defender just 
cleared the stern of the judges’ boat and stretched 
away on a long starboard tack. She was to 
leeward of Adele still, but she footed like a 
hare and rapidly edged out ahead. She was so 
close to Adele that it is not probable that at 
any time she was affected by her back draft. 
At first it seemed to be merely a case of mak- 
ing Seneca foot at the expense of pointing, in 
order to drive her clear of Adele, but once she 
drew out she hauled up, and Adele, the boat 
that astonished everybody by working in a five 
and a half mile point compass, pinched up in 
vain. Twelve minutes after the start Seneca had 
drawn well clear, and then the race was really 
over. 
There was no battle of skippers: there was no 
chance for it here. Adele had never shone con- 
spicuously when it came to short hitches and 
false tacks, and skipper Jarvis wisely kept her 
going, preserving as much way as possible. Thus 
the starboard tack lasted till 1.18.45, when Adele 
came round. Seneca was now the leading boat 
by a hundred yards, and she swung around after 
Adele like an automaton on the well known 
principle of always keeping between your op- 
ponent and the buoy—if you can. They settled 
down on a port tack that lasted till 1.43.30, when 
Adele again made the first move and Seneca 
silently countermoved. The breeze all this time 
had been strengthening, until it was blowing 
eight miles an hour or more, but Seneca’s gain 
was not apparently due to drifting qualities, and 
in the freshening wind instead of Adele eating 
up the gap, it widened. 
They came back to the port tack at 2.07. 
Seneca following Adele’s movements like her 
shadow, but the distance was so great between 
the boats now—and the wind for a time so true 
—that maxims could be safely disregarded. 
Seneca took a couple of short hitches by her- 
self, starboard at 2.13.30, port at 2.15.20. Adele 
hung on till at 2.19.30. She went on the star 
board tack, but Seneca disregarded her, and held 
the starboard till 2.20. When she came about 
she went on the port tack at 2.32 with half a 
mile of water separating her and Adele. Adele 
had to go on the port tack to turn, but she did 


not do so until minutes after Seneca was around 
and off for the second buoy. The time of the 
turn was: 
Seneca sheer hes 2 35 30 Adele #7 caadeistoote 2 42 38 
Seneca’s gain in seven miles of windward 
work was 7m. 8s. It was a broad reach to the 
next buoy. Seneca set her spinnaker and passed 
the clew of it around her forestay, making it 
act like a balloon jib. Toronto yachtsmen have 
always had a superstitious horror of the “spin- 
nakereen,’ and some of them are to this day 
of the opinion that it is “against the rules,” 
Why it should be no one knows, and that it 
isn’t Judge George Owen, of Winthrop, Mass., 
Says, so that what Hanan . did went, and the 
lightnings of heaven didn’t descend. There 
was a good streak of wind out in the lake from 
the first buoy to the second, and once the yachts 
got around they rushed off at a merry clip, tear- 
ing off a good seven knots. The reach was made 
without any incident other than that of Seneca 
widening the gap. Adele never was strong in 
reaching, being usually passed by Crusader, and 
sometimes by Aileen in the trial races on this 
point of sailing, and Seneca made a show of her. 
By this time the yachts were at opposite enas 
of the far flung excursion fleet, Seneca leading 
the van, Adele at the head of the rear guard. 
She lost almost as badly on the reach as she 
had in the windward work, and the time at the 
turn was: 
SENECA Nee see aed oO Adelés. 753i eee 3 46 00 
Seneca’s gain in seven miles of reaching was 
4m. 32s. Half the spectator fleet, the sailing 
half, had by this time turned home, for the wind 
was beginning to soften, and there was a chance 
of being left out in the lake becalmed, and noth- 
ing but a miracle or a motor could save the day 
for Adele. Stop! There was One thing that 
could—the time limit. As the yachts went slower 
and slower after jibing at the buoy, and bring- 
ing mainsails to port for the broad reach home, 
the potentialities of the time limit loomed larger 
and larger. At first all that was threatened was 
a fairly late finish; but when three miles from 
the buoy the wind played out altogether, things 
began to look serious or hopeful, according to 
your nationality. The wind died, but would not 
stay dead. Its revivals were feeble aitempts at 
imitating what the wind had been off shore, but 
they never got very far. Seneca would get a 
puff that would fill her sails and then forge 
ahead. Everything would suddenly fall limp 
aboard of her as she forged ahead of the faint 
breeze, and she would lose her way, but she 
never quite stopped, for the breeze would pick 
her up and she responded very quickly. 
Adele, on the other hand, seemed to have 
better luck. Possibly it was because she was 
sailing more slowly, but her sails were always 
full, or at least seemed so. She was now com- 
pletely isolated, the whole fleet having moved 
on ahead of her. 
Seneca’s sails were shifted from side to side 
half a dozen times, but the long crawl from the 
second buoy was in the main a broad reach 
with the wind on the starboard quarter. The 
time limit was perilously near up when Seneca 
floated across the line, but she had a minute and 
forty-eight seconds to spare. If she had had 
to go another hundred yards there would have 
been “no race.” 
Seneca’s reception from the spectators, Cana- 
dian and American alike, was vociferous. The 
immense crowd that lined the pier at Charlotte 
took up the strain. Adele, too, was cheered till 
the heavens rang when she came along in tow 
of the steam yacht Tranquilo, having downed 
her sails when the race was declared off, but it 
is easier to cheer the loser than to cheer him up. 
Here is the official time: 
Start. Ist Mark. 2d Mark. Finish. 
Seneca igs eandseeas 1 00 31 2 35 30 3 34 30 5 58 22 
Ai Get oi oeabeenee 100 25 242388 3 46 00 Not taken 



